This invention relates generally to laminates for printed circuits and more specifically to the woven glass fabric used as a reinforcing filler in such laminates.
Cloth woven of warp and fill yarns composed of fine, twisted glass filaments is widely used as reinforcement and substrate filler material for printed circuits. The cloth is typically impregnated in a treater with a liquid resin of organic polymer such as epoxy, then partially polymerized or semicured by heat to an easily handled material known as prepreg. It is laminated with other prepreg sheets or metal foil to full polymerization or final cure under heat and pressure. The foil is etched to form circuits and multiple sets of laminate can be joined. Thereafter, holes are drilled for circuit vias from one surface of the laminate to the other to connect circuit lines on the opposite panel surfaces.
The via or through hole walls are plated with conductive material that is usually copper to provide electrical continuity. For the plating process, the newly-drilled holes are cleaned with a liquid, seeded with a plating accelerator in a bath, then metal-plated by immersion in an electroless plating solution. After these circuitized substrates have been in service varying lengths of time, failures frequently have occurred as short circuits.
Analysis of these failures has revealed that metal, usually copper, has plated onto the interior of the glass yarns along the filament surfaces extending from the hole walls, eventually contacting a nearby voltage or ground plane or another hole wall. The spontaneously plated metal has resulted from plating solution being trapped in voids along the glass filaments of the warp yarn and subjected to applied voltage differentials. The solution became trapped in the voids from the time the hole walls were initially immersed in plating solution. After plating had been completed, the plating solution had been unable to drain from the filament voids. The voids generally were elongated and occurred near the centers of the warp yarns. This indicates that the glass yarns were not wholly or entirely impregnated with resin so that voids existed among the bunched filaments forming those yarns. Such voids occurred only infrequently within the orthogonal fill or weft yarns.
A subsequent finishing step for the cloth in the manufacturing process is that of removing filament lubricant coatings. The fabric is subjected to high temperature that has the ancillary effect of further tending to fix the cross sectional dimensions of the yarn and prevent later yarn relaxation or expansion.
The difficulty of thoroughly impregnating the glass yarns has been noted in a paper by G. Wiedemann, H. Rothe, A. Hasse and R. Wiechmann entitled "Relations Between Properties of Wetting and Impregnation, Technology, and Application of FRP", Advanced Composition of Matter, Proceedings International Conference, 3rd, Volume 2, pages 1636-51, 1980. On pages 1641 and 1642, the authors describe the presence of capillary lines or hollow spaces among filaments, particularly in the warp yarns. Their investigation concluded that the thorough impregnation of yarns was hindered by gumming due to the coupling agents used for adherence and by the density of the packed filaments in the yarn requiring greater displacement of air.